Chapter 7: Workshop
The first week of classes taught Lucus three things.
First: the academic content of NEXUS Academy was significantly more rigorous than what he had described in his novel.
He'd written Ethan's classes in the impressionistic style of a protagonist broad strokes, emphasis on the dramatic and the relevant-to-plot, with the institutional mechanics of education mostly glossed over.
The reality was that Class B Cohort Three had a schedule running from the sixth hour of morning to the ninth hour of evening, with a two-hour meal break, and it included not just combat and mana training but also history, geography, political theory, monster taxonomy, dungeon cartography methodology, and a surprisingly demanding course in applied mathematics that turned out to be foundational for calculating mana conversion ratios.
He kept up. Lucas Martin's body had been enrolled in the pre-academy program that most noble children attended—a basic curriculum that had given this body's brain a foundation in all these subjects. Lucus's own background as someone who had done years of research for a fantasy novel helped more than he'd expected.
Second thing: the social ecosystem of Class B was more complex than he'd written extras' social ecosystems to be. Because he'd barely written them at all.
The twenty-two students in Class B Cohort Three came with histories, motivations, alliances, and frictions that had nothing to do with the main plot and everything to do with each other.
There was a conflict between two students over a resource claim from before enrollment that simmered through the first week.
There was a friendship already forming between a Beastkin girl named Serri and a quiet merchant's son named Palas that was clearly going to become something more.
There was the girl near the window—whose name he'd learned was Maris Thorne, daughter of a minor military family from the southern provinces—who had now twice positioned herself where she could observe both the room's occupants and its exits simultaneously.
Maris Thorne was watching him as much as he was watching her.
Third thing: something was already off about the novel's events, and it wasn't just his presence.
It was the sixth day when he noticed it first.
The academy's schedule included a shared facility period a rotating slot where different class cohorts used the same training grounds simultaneously. Lucus had been using these periods for the wind affinity practice that was slowly making his pathetically minor elemental access marginally less pathetic.
He was in the northern training grounds, running a basic wind-shaping exercise nothing impressive, just learning to move mana through the specific meridian pathways that produced wind-affinity output when the Class A cohort arrived for their scheduled combat assessment.
He kept his eyes down. Continued his exercise. Maintained the invisibility of someone who appeared to be focused on their own work.
But he was listening.
The Class A combat assessment involved pairs sparring under faculty observation. He could track the sequence from the sounds alone: the sharp concussion of aura-reinforced strikes, the distinctive crackle of mana building for release, the occasional faculty comment cutting through the ambient noise.
He heard it when Ethan and Aiden were paired.
In his novel, this was supposed to happen in chapter six, the combat assessment in week two, which served as the first real display of both characters' abilities and the establishment of their rivalry. It was supposed to be a roughly even fight, with Ethan showing unexpected tactical creativity that rattled Aiden's confidence despite the latter's superior polish.
What he heard was not a roughly even fight.
The collision of aura energies was audible from thirty meters. A sharp, percussive sound that made several other students in the training ground look up.
Then a silence that lasted approximately three seconds. Then a faculty voice measured, controlled, but carrying surprise: "Assessment complete. Von Sliverstel: dominant result."
Lucus let his wind exercise collapse and turned, very casually, to look.
Aiden Stromfang was on one knee on the sparring platform. Not injured ,his aura reinforcement was too practiced for a training spar to land real damage but clearly unable to immediately stand. His expression was doing something complex and internal.
Ethan stood at the far edge of the platform. He was breathing harder than the short duration of the fight should have produced, which suggested he'd pushed output near his current maximum. His electric blue eyes were focused on Aiden with an expression that was—not triumph.
Something more careful than that. Something that looked like concern.
He walked to the edge of the platform and offered a hand.
Aiden looked at it for a moment. Then took it.
In Lucus's novel, the first fight between Ethan and Aiden had been close enough to end in a draw, with the faculty ruling for Ethan on points.
It was supposed to be a slow build—Aiden's pride slightly dented but not broken, the rivalry sharpening over the subsequent months.
This had not been a close fight.
This had been a dominant result in a week-one assessment.
Lucus turned back to his exercise and pretended to be very focused on his wind shaping.
In his head: 'Ethan is stronger than I wrote him. Week one, and he's already performing at a level I'd planned for month three. Why? What's different?'
And then, following that: 'Is it because of me? Did me being here—being Lucas Martin, being someone who shouldn't be in Class B—displace something, shift something, accelerate the system in ways I can't predict?'
Or: 'Did I simply underwrite the protagonist?'
The second possibility was, if anything, more unsettling.
He went to Taros Blackthorn's shop that evening.
The artificer's Row in the eastern quarter was exactly as he'd sketched it in his world-building document: a tight lane of storefronts where the dominant aesthetic was practical and dense, shelves visible through windows, workshop sounds carrying into the street.
Taros's shop was identifiable by the bronze falcon above the door, the Valhalla craftsman's mark and the smell of machine oil and ozone that suggested active rune-work inside.
The dwarf was at his workbench when Lucus came in, doing something delicate to the interior of a larger version of the detection compass Lucus had identified on the street. He didn't look up immediately.
"Yer a day later than I expected," Taros said.
"Classes started."
"Aye." The dwarf set down his tools and turned on his stool.
"Class B. Heard ye jumped from the C assessment bracket. Secondary factors?"
"I trained for the two days before the ceremony."
"Two days of training doesn't jump an assessment bracket."
Lucus thought about how to answer this. "My mana circulation was inefficient when I took the entrance exam. I corrected the inefficiency. The secondary assessment reflected the corrected baseline."
Taros looked at him for a long moment. "Most seventeen-year-olds don't know they have circulation inefficiencies."
"Most seventeen-year-olds don't spend two days researching their own mana pathways."
"Why did you?"
"Because the class I was placed in had an event I needed to avoid."
He hadn't planned to say that. But there was something about Taros Blackthorn—the directness, the assessing bronze eyes, the sense of someone who processed information accurately rather than comfortably—that made indirect answers feel more wasteful than honest ones.
The dwarf was quiet for a beat. "What kind of event?"
"The dungeon trial at the end of the semester. Class C's assigned group hits something they shouldn't be able to survive. I don't think that's accurate," he added quickly, "I think they survive. But I think it's worse for C than for B, and I'd rather be on the better side of that line."
This was technically true. He was reframing his foreknowledge as tactical reasoning, which was the closest to honest he could get without the explanation sounding like something that belonged in a completely different category of conversation.
Taros studied him. "And what do ye want from me?"
"Information. Specifically—" Lucus picked his words carefully.
"There's a void-spectrum mana emergency protocol in the academy's orientation materials. Specific enough that it was written from precedent rather than theory. Has there been an incident on campus recently involving void-spectrum mana?"
The workshop went quiet in a particular way.
Taros turned back to his workbench. Picked up his tools again. "That's not the question of a first-week student."
"No. It isn't."
"Where did ye get that kind of read on a procedural document?"
"I told you. I read things correctly."
Another silence. Longer. The dwarf worked—or appeared to work—on the compass device. The rune on its casing flickered once with blue light, then steadied.
Finally: "The incident was sixteen months ago. A staff member in the lower faculty maintenance grade—was found to have void-spectrum corruption in his mana signature. It was contained before it spread. The academy updated its protocols. The case was not made public."
"What caused the corruption?"
"Official position: unknown exposure during a dungeon survey. Unofficial position—" Taros set his tools down again and looked at Lucus directly.
"Some people think it wasn't accidental. That someone on the outside put it there."
The Cult of the Abyss. Active in Arc Two. Apparently present now. Already inside the academy's walls, sixteen months ago.
"Thank you," Lucus said.
"Yer going to be trouble," Taros said, not unkindly.
"I'm trying very hard not to be."
"That's what all the trouble-makers say." The dwarf turned back to his compass.
"Come back when ye have more questions. Bring coin."
Lucus left the shop and stood in the artificer's Row for a moment, watching the evening deepen the shadows between the storefronts.
Sixteen months ago. Before the story began. Before Ethan arrived, before the academy year started, before any of the events he'd planned.
The Cult of the Abyss had already moved.
And the author hadn't known.
To be Continued..